Ethics complaint filed against Glodis

Friday

Jun 29, 2012 at 6:00 AM

By John J. Monahan TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

The state Ethics Commission has brought a complaint against former Worcester County Sheriff Guy W. Glodis for allegedly urging Worcester County Jail officials to place an inmate in a work release program at the request of a friend and campaign supporter.

The Enforcement Division of the Ethics Commission has filed an order alleging that Mr. Glodis violated two sections of the state conflict of interest law by making the request to county jail officials.

A hearing on the allegations will be scheduled within three months. If the commission finds that the former sheriff violated the conflict of interest law, Mr. Glodis could be fined up to $10,000, officials said.

Mr. Glodis said yesterday that the inmate was released as a result of jail overcrowding — not because of his political connections.

The order detailing the allegations asserts that David G. “Duddie” Massad, a local businessman who is chairman and majority stockholder in Commerce Bank and Trust Co., was a friend and campaign supporter of Mr. Glodis when the alleged violation occurred in 2009. The order alleges that one of Mr. Massad’s employees, who was overseeing construction of an automobile dealership showroom in Auburn, was due to begin a four-month sentence at the Worcester County Jail for a larceny conviction.

On Oct. 28, 2009, the day before the inmate was scheduled to begin his sentence, Mr. Massad contacted Mr. Glodis and asked if the inmate could be placed on work release so that he could continue to oversee the project, according to the Ethics Commission.

The commission did not name the inmate.

However, the timeline matches with the inmate being Joseph T. Duggan III of Shrewsbury, a friend of Mr. Massad’s and a former contractor who had been stripped of his state construction supervisor license after a number of customers complained that he had pocketed their money without finishing the jobs for which he was paid.

The Telegram & Gazette previously reported that Mr. Duggan, who was supposed to serve four months in prison for scamming a Worcester homeowner out of $18,000, was placed into a work release program on Oct. 29, 2009. Mr. Massad had paid the $18,000 in restitution for Mr. Duggan, and a judge agreed to reduce the two-year jail sentence to four months.

Mr. Duggan was placed in the work release program despite a written sheriff’s department policy that had been approved by Mr. Glodis less than two weeks earlier that barred inmates with “warrants or cases pending before any court” from participating in the work release program.

At the time, Mr. Duggan had two criminal cases pending in Westboro District Court.

The state law authorizing sheriffs to establish work release programs requires that inmates be permitted to leave confinement only “during necessary and reasonable hours for the purpose of working at gainful employment.”

For the first two months of his sentence, Mr. Duggan signed out of the jail about 6 every morning except Sundays. He didn’t return most days until after 8 p.m., according to prisoner movement logs obtained by the Telegram & Gazette in 2010. In late December 2009, Mr. Duggan was released on an electronic monitoring bracelet for the remaining two months of his sentence.

Mr. Glodis worked as a business development officer for Mr. Massad’s Commerce Bank for about 18 months in 2005, before taking over as sheriff.

According to the complaint from the Ethics Commission, Mr. Glodis allegedly agreed to contact jail officials about the request from Mr. Massad, and told Mr. Massad someone from the jail would contact him if the inmate could be placed on work release.

The next day, a jail official contacted Mr. Massad, and told him the inmate would be placed on work release, provided that Mr. Massad assumed responsibility for picking up and returning the inmate to jail, according to the Ethics Commission.

Mr. Glodis said yesterday that he expects to be vindicated when the alleged violation is heard.

“I’m confident this issue will be resolved in a timely and just manner, and I am confident that no ethical laws were violated,” he said. “I certainly understand the due diligence of the commission to look into the matter.” He added that other factors will show the inmate assignment to work release was not unwarranted.

An independent three-member panel at the jail voted to release the inmate with no influence from Mr. Glodis or the sheriff’s office, Mr. Glodis said. Further, he said, the jail was at the time operating under a federal consent decree to release nonviolent, non-sex-offender minimum security inmates. He said that particular inmate met all three of those criteria.

The Ethics Commission stated that Mr. Glodis allegedly violated the law by using his office to provide an unwarranted privilege to the inmate and Mr. Massad.

Mr. Massad said in an interview yesterday that he did not recall all the details of what happened, but that he did remember asking Mr. Glodis if Mr. Duggan could be released to continue working on the showroom project.

“He didn’t do anything wrong,” Mr. Massad said of the former sheriff. “He just had somebody call me. We were right in the middle of a job. They have that all the time, the work release. I didn’t ask for anything special.”

Mr. Massad said that Mr. Duggan’s crime wasn’t so serious that he should have been disqualified from work release.

“The guy’s a good guy,” he said of Mr. Duggan. “He’s working on a job for us right now.”

Thomas Caywood and Aaron Nicodemus of the Telegram & Gazette staff contributed to this report.

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